LSU Football: 247Sports predicts outcome of Tigers’ season-opener

LSU football will kick off the 2021 season on the road.

The Tigers are set to travel to the west coast to take on UCLA on September 4.

While this non-conference matchup won’t have a direct impact on the SEC West division race, it’s still an extremely important game for LSU.

It’s imperative that the Tigers get off to a good start in 2021 — especially after suffering a shocking season-opening loss to Mississippi State in 2020.

Beating UCLA on the road will confirm that Ed Orgeron made the right decision to overhaul his coaching staff during the offseason.

A loss, however, and there will be some folks who start to throw around the term “one-hit wonder” when talking about Orgeron.

247Sports predicts the winner of LSU football’s season-opener against UCLA

We still don’t know who LSU’s starting quarterback will be in 2021 (it will either be redshirt senior Myles Brennan or sophomore Max Johnson), but that didn’t stop 247Sports’ Brad Crawford from predicting the winner of the Tigers/Bruins matchup.

Crawford has LSU winning a close game against UCLA by a score of 34-31.

“This game could feature a little bit of everything during opening weekend,” writes Crawford. “LSU expects to have a solid team after welcoming back 20 starters from last season along with several new staff additions.”

This feels about right. LSU is the more talented team. And Chip Kelly at UCLA isn’t the same Chip Kelly we saw at Oregon when he had Marcus Mariota and LaMichael James. This is definitely a game that LSU should be favored in — even though it’s a true road game.

By the way, Kelly last coached against LSU in 2011. The Tigers beat Oregon 40-27 in the 2011 season-opener in Texas.